I actually really enjoyed this show – I got to play Barenaked Ladies, pretend to decode digital messages and discovered Momus & John Henriksson – but all that’s mattered since is that I set up a competition to win Josh T. Pearson’s Last of the Country Gentlemen. The problem is, I paid for the prize, so if I really wanted people to actually enter it, and so I’ve ended up spamming my way across Twitter like a gigantic, self-obsessed Josh T. Pearson fan.

Oh.

You can enter the competition until about 7pm GMT tomorrow (the 21st) by emailing the name of his old band to thefolkbloke[at]gmail.com, by the way.

Last week’s Folk Bloke featured me making up a stupid story about the Australian bush before introducing a song. I’ve still not figured out, given that the show is pre-recorded, why I didn’t cut it out of the final show. It is silly.

True to my word to my friend Matt, and the fact I should really pay some attention to my own roots, I’m gonna approach some lovely Australian music today. Matt had some suggestions: Gyroscope, Potbelleez, The Living End, The Presets and Faker. Now I can’t approach them all, mainly because I’m supposed to be working at the moment, and I frankly don’t know enough about some of them to make informed opinions, but consider them all recommendations from Matt.

The Living End’s new single “White Noise” is a breezy shot of pop-rock, with some nice melodic vocals put over the top. There are elements of Wolfmother riffage, a nice call and response chorus and the whole thing is well put together. I can’t get hold of the track at the moment, but it’s on their Myspace, as well as the riff-heavy “How Do We Know”.

I can’t review Gyroscope’s album, but I can review their first single from it, mainly because it was everywhere when Cat and I were travelling in Oz earlier this year. “Snakeskin” starts with an almost early-Muse intro, building into a blistering, throaty chorus that could carry the song by itself. Yet again, I’m a bit rubbish, so I can’t provide you with a download, but here’s their Myspace.

I’ve already expressed my love for The Presets particular brand of electric apocalypse rock, and they’ve released a new single “Talk Like That”. Opening with a typically ostentatious organ, and then introducing the marvellously deep, Editors-on-a-football-terrace vocals that dominate the song. And I actually have this song!